Refloresta

Climate Change is directly related to greater vulnerability to fires and their increased severity, although changes in land use due to rural depopulation, new economic trends, agricultural regulation, etc.… aggravate the vulnerability of a Cross-border Space that is eminently forested.

Both PREVENTION of fires and RECOVERY after them are key measures to improve resilience and REFLORESTA focuses on both challenges with innovative approaches:

• It addresses prevention by employing for the first time Artificial Intelligence techniques so that in the detection of vulnerabilities and points of special risk, new meteorological, environmental and territorial variables can be managed, as well as the memory of all recorded fires, based on historical data series from the last 40 years. The results will be novel and more precise than those currently available, and will be able to incorporate meteorological forecasts so that operations such as INFOCA, INFOCAL or Proteçâo Civil can anticipate and even carry out preventive actions.
• In terms of Recovery, the objective is to create landscapes more resilient to Climate Change and future fires, and for this the approach is also innovative, applying techniques such as hydraulic modeling to minimize the transport of ash to rivers and soil erosion, or the combination of remote and close sensing (satellite/drone) for high-precision emergency diagnostics that allow applying new scientific-technical approaches in the design of Action Plans, or drafting these from ecosystem approaches to promote intelligent restoration of affected landscapes and ecosystems.

In the design of REFLORESTA, the cross-border approach and cooperation is fundamental, both to take advantage of capacities that are distributed among different entities of both States, and because each one provides pilot areas in diverse Ecosystems, representative of the POCTEP Territory, which will allow testing the techniques, approaches and tools of Governance, Planning and Management and obtaining useful lessons from this contrast.

This innovative approach of REFLORESTA is manifested both in its objectives and in the actions it will develop to address the challenges of the POCTEP Territory:

• Do more with less, act precisely at the points where there will be the greatest success rate, intervene without causing damage and in the way that facilitates natural reforestation (apply the concept of "Intelligent Reforestation" and "restoration of ecosystems and landscapes"). 
• Achieve minimum impacts, accelerate recovery, and restore ecosystems and landscapes that are more resilient and adapted to climate change, which generate biodiversity and sustainable economic development.
• Minimize the impact of fires on rivers, reservoirs and oceans, applying the latest technologies for territorial and forest observation and analysis to reduce soil loss, erosion and ash transport, and to rebuild landscapes that retain water and do not generate floods.
• Commit to more inclusive restoration, accommodating Local Communities (in the broad sense: citizen organizations committed united to the few residents typical in burnt areas) so that results in Ecosystem Restoration are more sustainable over time.

The expected result is better governance with improved prevention capabilities and intelligent restoration of ecosystems, to do more with less through better understanding of ecosystems and greater resilience

PREVENTION, RESILIENCE, ADAPTATION TO CLIMATE CHANGE and ECOSYSTEM-BASED APPROACHES are the four demands of the Specific Objective, and they are the four keys to REFLORESTA, because there is no other way to address the challenge posed by forest fires with guarantees of lasting success from a social, environmental and climate perspective.

The fire extinction phase is very important, but is not addressed in REFLORESTA due to its specificity (it has many emergency management components, and therefore little in common technically with prevention and restoration, which do use similar techniques and feed back into each other).

Prevention and Restoration have the same objective: the RESILIENCE of Forest Ecosystems and Landscapes against fires. 

Both phases are directly affected by Climate Change:

• In Prevention it represents an added difficulty, because weather is more unpredictable and its impact is greater. To improve preventive / predictive systems, the EU increasingly relies on Artificial Intelligence to be able to handle vast volumes of data and understand the patterns of accelerated climate evolution, and as a consequence of this, environmental evolution (how forest masses, soils, erosion evolve...all of this forming an interconnected cycle)
• In Restoration Climate Change is a key variable, since the objectives can no longer be the recovery of the original vegetation cover, but rather the construction of landscapes resilient to both new fires (which find in reforestations with insufficient maintenance a breeding ground sadly confirmed by Sierra de la Culebra, Almonaster, Pedrogâo Grande and so many others) and ADAPTED TO CLIMATE CHANGE: in order to survive, reforestations will opt for local nurseries and natural regeneration, which will prioritize new plants that already grow in environments of greater aridity and heat, and therefore more adapted to the future presented by the IPCC of the UN. This Restoration objective is only achieved by applying ECOSYSTEM-BASED APPROACHES both to the diagnosis of fires and to the design of restoration measures. Only by understanding the internal relationships of each ecosystem is it possible to propose successful recovery measures: it consists, for example, in beginning a reforestation only in shaded areas to facilitate the growth of the first trees and allow their seeds to colonize the sunny areas; it consists in opting for a 1st phase of shrubs so they can chemically recover the soil before planting trees; or in rejecting the use of heavy machinery where slopes and soil could suffer serious erosion from these same activities.

It addresses the following six activities, whose objectives are aligned with the general objective of the Program EP - Interreg VI A Spain – Portugal (POCTEP) 2021-2027 (to promote adaptation to climate change and disaster risk prevention, as well as resilience, taking into account ecosystem-based approaches).
 

The cross-border dimension of the project will enable stakeholders to collaborate in a greener Europe, low-carbon and transitioning towards an economy with net-zero carbon emissions and resilient, promoting a clean and equitable energy transition, green and blue investment, the circular economy, climate change mitigation and adaptation, risk prevention and management, and sustainable urban mobility.

The participating consortium is composed of ten partners, from two EU member countries, led by the General Secretariat for Environment and Climate Change.

1. General Secretariat for Environment and Climate Change (Spain, Main Beneficiary)
2. Environment and Water Agency of Andalusia (Spain, Beneficiary 2)
3. University of A Coruña (Spain, Beneficiary 3)
4. University of Córdoba (Spain, Beneficiary 4)
5. University of Trás-Os-Montes and Alto Douro (Portugal, Beneficiary 5)
6. Bóreas, S.L., Development and Technology Company (Spain, Beneficiary 6)
7. IDAF, S.L., Research Center Company Applied to Agroforestry Development (Spain, Beneficiary 7)
8. AGUIARFLORESTA, Forest and Environmental Association of Vila Pouca de Aguiar (Portugal, Beneficiary 8)
9. QUERCUS, National Nature Conservation Association (Portugal, Beneficiary 9)
10. General Directorate of Natural Heritage and Forest Policy Castilla y León (Spain, Beneficiary 10)

The phenomenon of fires is transboundary and only through cooperation can it be addressed from perspectives in which environmental and technical factors take priority over administrative ones. The INTERREG framework favors this approach, which otherwise tends to be the reverse and prioritize the administrative aspect.

In fact, even cooperation between different Autonomous Communities in Spain (such as Andalusia and Castile and León) is not straightforward within the framework of national programs, but rather INTERREG initiatives are what facilitate it.

Technical capacities and administrative experience are distributed throughout the POCTEP territory, not concentrated in a single location: a project based on cooperation allows bringing together the best specialists, and offers them a range of Pilot sites with similar starting situations and specific detail issues (they are not exactly the same ecosystems) that enriches the project results as it requires greater technical effort and offers greater variability of environmental, social, institutional and economic scenarios that are the determining factors in the challenge of fires.

The differences between the territorial and environmental management models of Spain and Portugal in the face of Climate Change challenges and identical environmental substrates make it especially interesting to share methodologies and test their validity. As indicated in the previous paragraph, prevention, extinction and recovery after fire are not strictly technical issues, but rather the governance model and social, cultural and economic factors are very relevant for the design of effective and sustainable actions over time. Cross-border cooperation allows critical reflection on our own models and learning from external schemes, as well as promoting a necessary exchange of ideas, experiences and knowledge.

The execution period is 37 months (September 1, 2023 to September 30, 2026).

The project has a total budget of 2,042,989.53 euros and is co-financed at 75% by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).